Share this:

Like this:

Social networks aren’t just for bragging while you’re on vacation, they’re an indispensable tool for planning and making the most of your trip—even if you don’t know a hashtag from a hashbrown

BARE FEET IN THE FOREGROUND, aqua-blue ocean in the background. This Instagram cliché is the extent of many people’s knowledge of social media when it comes to travel. But besides letting you humble brag (otherwise known as plain-old brag), many apps and sites offer real value to travelers. Among the best reasons to befriend, follow and be followed: You can get leads on great airline and hotel deals, keep a tidy visual diary while you roam and find the hot spots in every city ever ’grammed about. And, sure, you can also let all the sad souls back home see what you see, when you see it, bare feet and all. Here, a few tips on clearing the clutter and making social media work for you.

Facebook

The constantly evolving social network has long been the go-to place to share your vacation pics (yawn) and, more usefully, to hit up your friends and their friends for recommendations on where to stay and what to do in any given destination. And in recent years, a series of beefed-up features is making both the planning and sharing process more efficient.

Go Live | Launched world-wide last month, Facebook Live lets you live stream whatever you’re seeing and hearing directly into your friends’ Facebook feeds. You can broadcast in real-time your ski lift ride in Telluride or your truffle hunt in Umbria, then keep those broadcasts in your timeline until you delete them.

Gang Up | If you’re planning a getaway with a number of people, create a group and invite all your fellow travellers to use the “timeline” (think of it as a message board) to discuss logistics and make suggestions. “On an email thread, it’s easy for stuff to get lost in the shuffle,” said MoMo Zhou, a spokesperson for Facebook. “This helps you stay organised.”

Show and Tell | Facebook’s Events tab isn’t just a collection of invitations from people you met at networking events a decade ago. Within the past few months Facebook’s mobile app has rolled out the ability to browse events (live music and art exhibits, for example), by time and city, making it easier to snag tickets to see your favorite sax player, say, in a little-known jazz club in Amsterdam.

Twitter

Twitter has turned into an all-in-one spot for sharing—briefly. Along with disseminating your travel woes and triumphs in 140 characters or less, you can now post a slideshow of up to four photos and even edit and post a 30-second video. But it has, arguably, more-practical travel functions as well.

Bargain Shop | “Twitter is a quick, cost-effective way [for travel companies] to push out a last-minute deal or flash sale,” said Lauren Smith, vice president of marketing for tour operator Trafalgar U.S.A. “Search specific destinations, keywords and hashtags like #traveldeals.”

Troubleshoot | Twitter can also help resolve travel snafus, especially of the airline variety. “Twitter teams [on some airlines] are usually more empowered than phone agents,” said Gary Leff. “You can avoid hold times and get through to someone quickly. A seatmate on a recent flight tweeted @AmericanAir that he was going to miss his flight, and they rebooked him before we landed.”

Instagram

Armed with a series of flattering filters, the photo-sharing Instagram app is a nearly foolproof way to make your deskbound colleagues back home jealous, and perhaps more important, serve as a daily travel diary. That’s old news. What’s new is that the app now makes it easier to help map out your next trip and guide you when you’re on the road.

Window Shop | Last summer, Instagram rolled out a more robust search feature that lets you look up photos taken at practically any place you might be interested in visiting (beaches, museums, restaurants, you name it). That means if you type “Paris” in the search window, you’ll be led to all hashtags and posts with Paris-related tags. “I look for photos from people based in the city I want to go to,” said Amanda Spurlock, the social media manager for Zagat, the restaurant-review company. “They usually lead me to cool insider spots, like their favorite coffee shops.”

Show Restraint | “When you’re traveling, you can get so stoked on [all the images] you’re capturing that it may seem like you can’t get it out fast enough,” said Chris Burkard, a travel photographer with approximately 1.6 million Instagram followers. “But restraint is key.” Unlike on Twitter, where even the most zealous of tweeters are excused, on Instagram, there is such a thing as over-saturation. “I don’t have a magic number,” said Mr. Burkard, “but I typically post one to two photos a day.”

Snapchat

Snapchat launched in 2011 primarily as a way of sending short-lived pictures (and, later, videos) to friends. But in 2013, the app added Snapchat Stories, where a user can post a day’s worth of snaps and videos compiled into a movie of any length that anyone (followers or not) can view for 24 hours. True, you could share a picture or short video on Instagram or Twitter, but Snapchat is the only social app that lets you seamlessly string together a chain of photos, videos and commentary to sum up your travels.

Make a Travel Video Actually Worth Watching | The most well-crafted Snapshot Stories have a narrative arc. “If it’s all stills or selfies, it isn’t that engaging,” said Beth Kirby, a photographer and founder of the food blog Localmilkblog.com, who recently “snapped” her way around ceramic studios and hot springs in Japan. Start with some early exposition—perhaps a selfie video at the start of your bike ride through the Pyrenees—snapshots and clips as you approach the Col du Tourmalet and a big finish. It’s like mapping out a PowerPoint presentation, only more fun.

Dive Into Your Location’s ‘Live’ Stories | Not really into making a little home movie? That’s OK. Thanks to Snapchat’s “Live” stories feature (swipe right from the home screen) you can view a curated collection of photos and videos from the geographic region you’re currently in. It’s a quick, snappy introduction to some of the people, places, news and events that are trending nearby.

Periscope

The newest of the apps here, Periscope—owned by Twitter and launched last March—has one main function: It lets you turn your smartphone into a live video camera, letting you stream whatever’s around you directly to anyone on the app and Twitter, and respond to comments in real-time. Your Periscope feed can pop up in your Twitter feed and stay live for 24 hours, and then—poof—it’s gone, meaning a less-than-perfect broadcast won’t live to haunt you. And earlier this week Periscope announced it’ll allow users to preserve their streams by adding #save to the title of the broadcast.

Take Viewers for a Ride | Like an increasing number of media outlets and bloggers, Kalyan Karmakar, the founder of Mumbai-based food blog Finelychopped.net, uses Periscope to transport viewers to far-flung corners of the world—in his case, through the food markets and back streets of Mumbai. “I like to use [Periscope feeds] to give people a chance to learn about other cultures,” said Mr. Karmakar.

Don’t Sweat It | According to Ms. Spurlock, who runs Zagat’s Periscope account, many people are hesitant to use live-broadcasting because they’re worried that it won’t be good enough. “There’s the added pressure of not being able to perfect and edit and add filters,” said Ms. Spurlock. “But the Periscope community’s take is: Just hit broadcast.” And don’t stress about your phone’s memory. Periscope ’casts are streamed rather than downloaded, so they don’t take up any memory.

A Word About Hashtags

Think of hashtags as breadcrumbs leading the way, in the vast universe of social media, to topics of interest to you. For travellers, there are more hashtags than stars in the sky, but according to Janice Morris, Twitter’s head of lifestyle, a few of the most popular ones are:#CruiseChat (a Tuesday forum for all your pressing cruise questions), #TravelTuesday (another Tuesday forum for Tweeters looking for all kinds of travel tips) and #FamilyTravel (an anytime, any-day handle that offers a wealth of kid-friendly travel advice and recommendations).

Like this:

The music industry has been asking itself this question ever since Napster crashed the party. As it turns out, elite musicians such as Rihanna and Taylor Swift, who routinely earn millions year after year, have been providing answers all along. They write their own rules for success, including a willingness to use their music as a springboard to build resilient brands that transcend the industry. Call them the new music moguls.

To better understand how the new music moguls roll, David Deal recently examined the artists who appear regularly on the annual Forbes list of highest-paid musicians, as well as a few who will certainly make the 2016 list later this year. The 31 names on the 2015 list made huge bucks, starting with Katy Perry, with $135 million earned. The lowest ranking musicians, Dr. Dre and Maroon 5, made $33 million each — not a bad haul even for those at the bottom rung.

The new music moguls matter not just because they make money — although their financial gains certainly constitute a yardstick by which their success is measured — but also because they are willing to adapt to a changing industry. As Katy Perry told Forbes, “Music has changed. The record is that launching pad for all kinds of other creative branches.” Recorded music in and of itself does not pay the bills unless an artist knows how to play ball with brands.

The industry’s biggest stars build their fan bases with music, but they make their money elsewhere. The Jay Zs, Taylor Swifts, and Justin Timberlakes cash in from touring, forming endorsement deals with brands, and by launching their own business ventures. They treat their own music as branded content hustled across multiple media to raise their profiles and support their tours.

And who can blame them? Consumers just don’t buy enough recorded music anymore to support the performers we say we love. The old rules, such as releasing an album and then touring to support the album, don’t work anymore. And while the new music moguls were not the first musicians to dip their toes into the world of endorsement deals and merchandising, they’ve certain taken these practices to a new level.

Let’s take a closer look at three examples.

Beyoncéand Katy Perry: Hustling Songs like Content

Katy Perry made her $135 million in 2015 from touring (playing 126 shows and earning $2 million per venue) and endorsing products such as Claire’s, Coty, and CoverGirl. And Beyonce may earn as much as $250 million by the time her Formation tour wraps up July 31. Beyoncé and Katy Perry both demonstrates how stars treat music as branded content that fuels a number of broader endeavors.

For instance during the 2015 holiday season, Katy Perry debuted her song “Every Day Is a Holiday” in an H&M commercial and streamed the track into H&M stores. She also modeled the H&M holiday collection. Why? Because she was releasing her own line of holiday-themed onesies. What better way to draw attention to her own line of apparel?

But Beyoncé took song hustling to a whole new level when she released “Formation” during Super Bowl 50. She relied on two important media: video, where she could accumulate millions of views within a day of its release, and the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, where she could command a global platform. And she took every advantage of the opportunity by unleashing a controversial song that gained her so much media attention that she was out trending Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump on Google for several days following the Super Bowl.

Why would one of the world’s most powerful musicians, whose net worth exceeds $250 million, release a song that anyone can stream for free? Because her Formation World Tour is just around the corner, and “Formation” is a perfect advertisement for the tour. Controversy creates conversation. And conversation creates curiosity. It’s no coincidence that the Formation World Tour was selling out in venues across the United States immediately when tickets went on sale after the song was released.

Not a bad rate of return for a song.

Rihanna: The Art of the Co-Brand

Musicians and brands have been cozying up to each other for decades. But new music moguls such as Rihanna are going well beyond the time-honored practice of hawking products or accepting money for tour endorsements. They’re creating relationships that re-imagine the role of the brand and the artist.

For instance, Rihanna’s $25 million relationship with Samsung puts the corporate conglomerate in the role of music distributor. When Rihanna released her new album on January 28, she found a way to go platinum and make money within 15 hours: Samsung bought 1 million copies of the album and gave them away. For Rihanna and Samsung, the album going platinum is not about record sales — it’s about creating a moment that earns attention for two giant brands at a time when attention is currency, as Brian Solis has noted. And Samsung is also sponsoring her World Tour, where the real money is made.

Rihanna’s transformation into a global fashion and music brand is now complete. And it’s a wise move. In the fickle world of music, you are only as good as your last YouTube video. By expanding beyond music, Rihanna has diversified her brand and created more revenue streams, as a smart conglomerate should.

Hustle and Flow

Creating innovative relationships with brands. Hustling content everywhere. Those are among the lessons that the music moguls teach any marketer, inside and outside the music industry. The moguls have many other lessons to share, which is discussed in a recently published ebook, The New Music Moguls. The biggest lesson of all, though, is this: in a disrupted industry, you need to change your assumptions before someone changes them for you.